This invention relates to a disk drive system, and more particularly to a method for quickly formatting a disk.
A typical computer system includes a microprocessor, a memory and various peripherals. The disk drive is one of the peripherals for storing operating system files, application programs, data files and, in general, any information that user wishes to save for subsequent access. Both hard disk and floppy disk require the step of doing a start-up process before using the disk. The start-up process is called formatting. Currently, under the DOS and Windows environments, the formatting process is done by the "format" command that provided by Microsoft Company. The disk is divided and numbered into Sectors and Tracks, then the information about the Sectors and Tracks is written into the FAT and file directory that are previously built therein. FIG. 1 is a partition 10 structure diagram including a boot record 11, a first FAT 12, a second FAT 13, a file directory 14 and a data record area 15. Where file directory 14 consists of many file directory items 141 to store and provide the message about the data which stored in the data record area 15 such as file name, extension file name, creation time and etc. Using the format command to format a disk is time-consuming; for example, it needs 20 minute to format a 3 gaga-byte hard disk. Although Microsoft has provided a quick formatting command "format/q", it can be used only in the condition that the disk is unnecessary to be completely formatted (i.e. the disk has been formatted before) and besides not in the conditions listed below:
1. The disk is low level formatted.
2. The disk is repartitioned.
3. The disk has bad sectors.
The format command that Microsoft provided is time-consuming and the quick format command is restricted to particular conditions of the disk such as the disk is not low level formatted or the disk is not repartitioned and etc. It means that the quick format command "format/q" is work only for a disk that is formatted and had no bad sectors, not suites for any disks' formatting.